A Most Redolent Tension: Understanding Landscape in a Post-colonial New Zealand

Abstract

Within settler societies such as Australia and New Zealand, notions of landscape are influential in developing a sense of national distinctiveness while remaining a central point for reconciling the 'unsettlement' bought about by settlement. In this context, fundamental premises of landscape architecture such as 'sense of place' become complex propositions, inextricably interwoven with ideas of colonisation, romanticism, nationalism, identity and cultural representation. While common within post-colonial and cultural studies, these understandings of place are largely absent from landscape architecture discourse where the 'theoretical terrain' is largely derived from a Euro-American perspective. Encouraging students to engage with these understandings can prove difficult because many design students are reluctant to read material from outside their immediate discipline.